Mike Rogers, Michigan’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks during a campaign stop at the Mine Shaft in Houghton Saturday. Also appearing on the stop were U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, State Rep. Greg Markkanen, and former Republican gubernatorial candidates Kevin Rinke and Garrett Soldano. (Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette)
HOUGHTON — U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers, along with several other local and statewide Republican figures, made a campaign stop at the Mine Shaft in Houghton Saturday.
Rogers is running against Democratic candidate Elissa Slotkin for the seat currently held by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who is retiring. He spent seven terms as a U.S. House representative from Michigan’s 8th District, including serving as chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
Also speaking at the event were U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, State Rep. Greg Markkanen, and two Republican candidates from the 2022 gubernatorial race, Kevin Rinke and Garrett Soldano.
In an interview before the rally, Rogers listed several priorities he would pursue if elected. Number one, he said, was securing the U.S.-Mexico border, citing the negative impacts of fentanyl being trafficked across the border and high-profile crimes recently committed by people who entered the country illegally.
He said he would also work to address rising prices of groceries, gas and energy — noting that the latter costs hit U.P. residents especially hard.
He criticized the government’s push towards electric vehicles, which he has said would have its own environmental costs in the form of production by China, which produces the majority of the battery components for the vehicles. In 2023, President Joe Biden set a non-binding goal that half of all U.S. car sales be electric by 2030, and called for the economy to be zero-emissions by 2050.
A rule published in March by the EPA would require reduced emissions for new models. While technology-neutral, the EPA said, it also projected that under the new rules, electric vehicles could make up 56% of new passenger vehicles from 2030 to 2032.
An “all of the above” mix of petroleum and renewable energy would allow the U.S. to become energy-independent, Rogers said.
“If wind works, if solar works, then let it go,” he said. “But we have to have petroleum products, and we’re going to need them for probably the next 100 years. Buying it from Venezuela and Russia and watching China build two coal-fired plants a week is not the answer. So. what we’re going to do is make ourselves energy. Lower energy prices — that’ll lower gas prices, that’ll lower grocery prices, and we’re going to jazz up the economy through regulatory relief.”
He said he would look at the tax structure to make sure businesses aren’t overtaxed.
His previous experience in Washington would help him hit the ground running in the Senate, he said.
“I’m not enamored with the place,” he said. “I know where the light switches are. I can get busy the day I walk in, and I think that’s going to be an important thing to get this done soon so people aren’t hurt.”
Rogers also spoke on national security issues. Regarding Russia’s war on Ukraine, he said it would be important for a negotiated settlement to end the war. Once Ukraine is a flourishing country again, it should also repay the U.S. for the aid it’s received.
While it’s important for the U.S. to push back on Putin, he said, the war is expensive and brutal, with people “dying in place.”
“We need to make sure that there’s an end to this conflict,” he said. “And I think there’s a way to do that. It doesn’t mean cut off their arms and supplies. I think that would be a disaster. But what it does mean is we’re going to get to a point where this thing ends.”
Rogers also said he backs Israel in its ongoing war with Hamas, which he said would be important to stop the spread of terrorism. He said part of the blame comes from the Biden administration’s 2021 lifting of U.N. sanctions against Iran, which President Donald Trump had re-imposed several months before, as part of an effort to reinstate a nuclear-weapons agreement. Biden imposed sanctions on Iran’s drone and steel production in April after an Iranian attack on Israel. The House passed a bill to expand sanctions on Iranian oil sales to China, which was referred to the Senate’s Committee on Housing, Banking and Urban Affairs.
“If we want to solve this, we have to re-contain Iran by sanctions, stop their oil sales, tell them we’re not going to play any more games at the cost of literally tens of thousands of lives,” Rogers said.
Rogers, who also formerly worked as an FBI agent in the Chicago office, criticized the handling of the Jan. 6 investigation, saying the focus should have been narrowed to the most serious offenses. He said he did not agree with the misdemeanor charges for non-violent cases, such as last week’s arrest of Laurium resident Adam Mancuso.
“I think if you assaulted a police officer on Jan. 6, if you broke something, if you broke into an office that you knew you weren’t supposed to be in, you should go to jail … I don’t like this fact that you have people who were being arrested for illegal parading and spending all of these FBI resources when we have a Fentanyl crisis, and we ought to be targeting a lot of those resources toward solving fentanyl, solving organized crime, solving the cartels coming into Michigan,” he said.
Rogers, who said at a previous Houghton visit last October he believed the 2020 election was fair despite some irregularities, also disputed the Detroit Free Press’s summary of its editorial interview with him before the August primaries, in which they said he had refused to answer whether he believed the 2020 election was fair.
Rogers had declined to endorse Trump in 2016 and 2020. In a Washington Post op-ed published the day before the Jan. 6 attacks, he had criticized Trump’s actions after the 2020 election, saying they stoked discord and reminded him of “Third World dictatorships.”
Rogers is endorsing Trump for 2024, which he said he views as a policy-driven election, driven by issues such as the border and the high level of inflation over the past four years. He recalled a conversation with a young mother in mid-Michigan who burst into tears while talking about how she had to go to the food pantry before the end of the month.
“If you look four years ago, and you look today, there is no doubt in my mind, life was better,” he said. “…If we can’t get through a better economy, we’re going to be in trouble for a lot of these families.”
Rogers said voters should choose him over Slotkin in November. He touted his blue-collar background, calling Slotkin “out of touch.” He also pointed out extensive policy differences, such as Slotkin’s vote last year against a bill that would forbid states from enacting bans or limits on gas-powered vehicles.
“I just think it’s two perspectives, and if you want Washington to come to Michigan, you’re going to want Elissa Slotkin,” he said. “If you want to send someone from Michigan to Washington, you’re definitely going to want Mike.”
Bergman, who also spoke at Saturday’s event, is running for his fifth term in office against Democratic challenger Callie Barr. He said voters should make their decision by looking at his performance over the previous eight years.
‘Have I done what I said I would do?,” he said. “Have I listened to the constituents and have I been the representative who comes and sits down and talks to you, or have my representatives come and sit down and dialogued with you and find out what’s going on? Are we responsible to the constituents? And if the answer is yes, then I would say, ‘Well, how about, how about giving me another chance to continue to do what I’ve already done?’”
Bergman said his top priorities would be related to his work on the Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees. That includes recruiting and retention for the military, and continuing to provide increased benefits for veterans. He pointed to his 2022 support of the PACT Act, which provided benefits for veterans exposed to toxic chemicals such as Agent Orange, despite some conservative opposition.
Bergman also sits on the Budget Committee, where he chairs the Oversight Task Force. He said the budgeting committee has spent the past two years informing itself on the government’s budgeting process to see where money is headed. Bergman said they would exercise oversights over improper payments, which the government made either in the wrong amount or in error. The federal Government Accountability Office estimated the amount at $236 billion for the 2023 fiscal year.
“We’ve got to clean out our basement, and our garage, with a lot of stuff that’s growing mold down there, and a lot of it is government programs,” he said.
He said the committee would not look at cutting Social Security or Medicare benefits, but wold look at waste and fraud within the programs. He also said he would work to shrink the control of the Department of Education, although some special needs and disabilities requirements would still be controlled federally, he said. A House bill introduced this summer would send education funding to the states in block grants, bypassing the DOE.
“What they did was a job created to administer money that could have easily been administered by the states,” he said.
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Publish date : 2024-09-02 18:59:00
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